Introduction

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In his book ‘The rise of Christianity’ … American Sociologist and agnostic Rodney Stark outlines how Christianity went from being a small movement in Judea at the time of Jesus … to becoming the majority religion of the Roman Empire … all within about 300 years.  Stark puts it down to 4 things:

1. The first was the treatment of women.  Christianity valued women more highly than the pagan religions did … allowing them things like equal participation in worship.

2. The second was the treatment of the poor.  Where the Greeks looked after the Greek poor … and the Romans looked after the Roman poor … the Christians looked after everyone’s poor.

3. The third was the treatment of children.  Christian not only refused to kill their female babies … like the pagans would … they would take in female babies who had been left to die of exposure.

4. And fourthly was the treatment of the sick.  During the plagues of 165AD and 251AD … where many people moved to the country … to socially distance … Christians stayed in the cities … taking in and caring for any who had been kicked out of their own homes because they’d contracted the plague.  Many Christians died … from caring for those with the plague.

In a nutshell … Christianity took over the Roman Empire because people saw how compassionate Christians were … and were in turn attracted to Christianity.  In our passage today … the prophet Jonah is the exact opposite of compassionate.

For those who may not have been here for the whole series … God told the prophet Jonah back in chapter 1 to go to the great city of Nineveh … the capital of the Assyrian Empire … and preach against it.  Instead … Jonah went in the exact opposite direction.  Why?  As we just read in v. 2 … because he KNEW that if his preaching was effective … God would show compassion on the Ninevites and not destroy them.  And as we saw last week … that’s exactly what happened.  The Ninevites repented … so God relented … v. 10 … ‘and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened’.  The very next verse … we’re told … Jonah becomes angry at this.  The literal translation …

Jonah 4:1 (Literal) This was evil to Jonah, a great evil, and Jonah became angry.

Now you might think that God would simply squash our wayward prophet for charging God with evil.  But once again God is very patient with Jonah … giving him yet another chance to get it right.  And in this chapter God uses a plant as a type of enacted parable … to show Jonah there is something very wrong with his heart.  And the thing that’s wrong with Jonah’s heart … is that Jonah FEARS for the salvation of Nineveh … and instead longs for its judgment … whereas God fears for the judgment of Nineveh … and instead longs for its salvation.  And the question this passage asks is … where is OUR heart at?

The book of Jonah ends very strangely … very abruptly.  We’re not told what happens to Jonah.  There’s no Jonah 4:12 … where Jonah goes home and lives happily ever after.  But the genius of this ending … which shows the Bible is not merely a human book … it is a divine book.  No human is this smart.  The genius of this ending … is it throws the closing question over to the reader.  Is OUR compassion more like that of Jonah … or of God?  Are Christians TODAY … known for showing the kind of compassion that helped the early church conquer the entire world for Christ … or are we more like Jonah?

Well I’ve got 3 points today … as your sermon outline shows … to try and figure out how WE can ensure our hearts are filled with compassion.  So we’re going to start by looking at Jonah’s actions in this chapter … which I’ve titled (i) What Jonah wants.  We’ll then look at the LESSON God is trying to teach with this plant … which I’ve titled (ii) What Jonah is forgetting.  We’ll then concluded with our application … which is (iii) What God wants.  So let’s dive in … and see how we can show the kind of compassion that changes the world.

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What Jonah wants (v. 1-5)

 

And our passage picks up STRAIGHT after God relents in destroying Nineveh … with these LITERAL words:

Jonah 4:1 (Literal) This was evil to Jonah, a great evil, and Jonah became angry.

And the thing Jonah finds to be a great evil is God’s seeming lack of justice.  As I mentioned last week … history tells us the Assyrian Empire brought cruelty and violence to a whole new level.  They were the first expansionist nation in history.  And those they didn’t KILL in their attempt at world domination … they tortured … maimed … or deported to a different country.  One of the reasons the Roman Empire lasted centuries longer than the Assyrian or Babylonian Empires is because the Romans didn’t deport people.  Ripping people from their homeland was one of the reasons people rose up against Assyria and Babylon so quickly.

Now one of the reasons they were so violent is because they were a polytheistic nation.  In his book ‘The City of God’ … the great theologian Augustine does of critique of polytheism.  And he says this.  If there is ONE God … then the world is an orderly place.  Even though there might be sin and evil in the world … God’s plan is to bring it BACK into order.  Polytheism on the other hand is inherently chaotic and violent.  Why?  Firstly … because the gods were all at war with each other.  Polytheism RARELY seeks order and peace … because their gods are not gods of order and peace.  Though Rome may not have deported people … it was all about seeking power through subjugation.  Why?  Because that’s what the Roman gods did … and therefore taught.

Now some may say … ‘well … that’s why we should reject theism altogether’.  If religion is the source of so much violence and war throughout history … then atheism must be the preferred option.  Yet atheism is just as prone to violence.  To begin with … the theory of evolution is the strong dominating the weak.  In order for humans to evolve … the weak must be subjugated and wiped out.  But the bigger issue with atheism is that if there is no God … there is no absolute truth and no absolute justice.  It’s believed the atheist regimes of the 20th century were responsible for the annihilation of over 100 million people.  And the rationale is simple.  If there is no lawgiver … and no cosmic judge … then I can do what I want.  And if an evil enough person rises to power … they usually do.

Now you might say ‘but we should be tolerant’.  And that SOUNDS nice.  But where do we get that idea from?  We’ve simply plucked it out of thin air … as an attempt to try and curb the violence inherent in a world where there is no lawgiver and no cosmic judge.  So atheism … alongside polytheism … are sources of violence and injustice.

And after being exposed to this wickedness and violence firsthand … Jonah is like ‘what are you going to do about this God?’  You’re the lawgiver.  You’re the cosmic judge.  So do something.  And we read:

Jonah 4:5 (NIV) Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city.

What Jonah WANTS … is for God to nuke the city.  He goes and gets himself front row seats … hoping God will send down holy fire from heaven … like He did for Sodom and Gomorrah.  Now notice what this tells us.  It tells us not only is polytheism and atheism prone to violence … so is religious moralism.  Jonah is COURTING violence here.  And he’s not courting violence IN SPITE of being religious.  He’s courting violence BECAUSE he’s religious.  He’s saying ‘I’m the good person … and they’re the bad people God.  So drop a thousand tonnes of Holy napalm on them God.’  Jonah’s prayer basically says ‘kill me now God … because I’d rather be DEAD than to live in a universe with a compassionate God’.  What Jonah wants … is violence.

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What Jonah is forgetting (v. 4-9)

 

So HOW is it … that this very religious … very moral prophet of God wants God to nuke an entire city?  It’s because Jonah has forgotten something very important.  And so what God does … is he asks Jonah a question.  Now the reason you ask someone a question is because you want to wake them up.  And the question God asks is:

Jonah 4:4 (NIV) … “Is it right for you to be angry?”

He THEN asks the exact same question a second time in v. 9.  Sandwiched between these repeat questions is this funny little episode with the plant.  So Jonah is sitting in the middle of a desert right … Nineveh is in modern day Iraq … dealing with the scorching heat.  So God interferes in Jonah’s life again … to remind him of something.  God causes a plant to grow up overnight.  Now there are some scholars who say ‘there are SOME plants that can grow super-fast’.  But the point of the text is GOD provided the plant.  God is interfering in his world with the plant … just like he did the fish … and just like he did with the conversion of an entire city.  And Jonah is happy with this plant … because it provides extra shelter from the desert heat.

Yet just when Jonah’s feeling a little better … God provides a worm that kills the plant … AND a scorching east wind … that makes a hot desert day almost deadly.  Jonah grows faint under the heat … and says:

Jonah 4:8 (NIV) … “It would be better for me to die than to live.”

Very dramatic.  The point of all this is to show Jonah there is something not right with his heart.  God says ‘you care about this plant … though it’s not even YOURS.  You didn’t plant it.  You didn’t water it.  The only reason you care about it is because of what it brings YOU.  Yet you’re sitting here asking me to nuke 120,000 people … along with their livestock.  Where is your compassion?

And the reason Jonah is lacking compassion is because he’s forgotten something very important.  He’s forgotten the great fish.  He’s forgotten that he TOO is a great sinner … in need of salvation.  You see the reason someone holds onto their bitterness towards another … and wants their demise … is because they think they have a right to be bitter.  Now WHY would someone think that?

It’s because they think they’re better than the other person.  They think ‘I would NEVER do something like that’.  And when we feel morally superior to others … when we look down on others for doing something ‘we would never do’ … it is next to impossible to forgive them.  Instead … we lock ourselves up in our own prison of bitterness.  In the TV show Ted Lasso … coach Ted suggests to his star player that he should think about forgiving his abusive father.  And the player says ‘no way.  I’m not giving him that’.  And Ted says ‘you’re not giving it to him.  You’re giving it to yourself’.  And you see a weight lift from his shoulders.

Now forgiveness is not easy.  It goes against our inbuilt desire for justice.  But forgiveness not only liberates us from the burden of bitterness … it helps us become hyper-attractive.  It helps us become the kind of compassionate people others want to be like.  So how is it that we can free ourselves from the weight of bitterness that Jonah was suffering … and be more compassionate?

Well there are 2 things we can do.  The FIRST is to look at whoever has hurt us … and ask ‘would I have done any different?’  Now you don’t even have to be a Christian to ask this.  It’s just common sense.  Do we REALLY want to look at someone and say ‘if I had their exact upbringing … with THEIR parents and siblings, THEIR peers and influences, THEIR teachers and mentors … their pressures and traumas … if I had THEIR life … do I really think I would never do anything like that?’  Are we REALLY willing to be that arrogant?  So step 1 is to ask … ‘would I have done any different?’

Step 2 … is look at the cross.  What Jonah had forgotten was the great fish.  Jonah had forgotten that HE needed saving just as much as the Ninevites did.  That’s what the great fish was; God saving Jonah from the punishment for running from God.  Jonah did NOT have a right to be angry … because God had already poured out his grace on JONAH in the fish.

In the same way … when Christians look to the cross … it reminds us we have no right to feel superior to others.  If you’re new or visiting today … and you’re wondering ‘what’s all this Christianity about?’ … this is it.  The REASON Jesus came to earth as a human baby … was so he could become vulnerable … killable.  And the reason Jesus became killable was so that he could take upon himself the punishment for our sin.  You see God’s cosmic justice means he CANNOT just let people’s sin go unpunished.  That would make him no better than a corrupt judge who let’s SOME criminals off … because they have the ‘right’ skin colour … or belong to the ‘right’ religion.  That’s not justice.  The cross is where God dishes out the cosmic justice that our sin deserves … yet he dishes it out upon himself.  God the Son took YOUR punishment upon himself.  And all we need to do to access that gift is (i) say sorry … repent of our sin, and (ii) put our faith in Jesus … which means to stop living the way WE think is right … and start living the way God says is right.

And the beauty of receiving God’s forgiveness is it humbles us.  It’s very hard to feel we have the RIGHT to look down on the sin of others … when we realise our sin required the death of an immortal being to deal with it.  Yet not only are we humbled … we’re affirmed.  In fact we’re SO affirmed by God’s grace to us … his free gift of forgiveness to us … that our anger just dissipates.  How can I remain angry at someone … when I’ve been forgiven way more than they ever did to me?  So what Jonah was forgetting … was the forgiveness he’d received in the great fish.  May we never forget the forgiveness we’ve received at the cross.

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What God wants (v. 10-11)

 

Well this brings us to the final 2 verses of the book of Jonah … which like I said … are the work of a literary genius:

Jonah 4:10-11 (NIV) But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

The genius of this ending … is this last question is for the reader.  According to the internet this week … there are just shy of 5.5 MILLION people living in greater Sydney today.  Not 120,000.  5.5 million people.  About 95% of them don’t go to church … and over half of them don’t even KNOW a Christian.  So what does the book of Jonah teach us about the people of Sydney?

Well FIRSTLY … it teaches us that God is going to judge them come Judgment Day.  The THEME of the book of Jonah is ‘judgment and grace’.  If you want to know what the story of Jonah and the whale is all about … this is it.  The message behind the story … is ‘judgment and grace’.  God is going to pour out his judgment upon ANYONE who has rejected HIS laws for His world … and instead made their own laws up for His world.  That was Jonah’s sermon from last week’s passage.  ‘Forty more days … Nineveh overturned’.

But the second thing this passage teaches us is God’s grace upon those who repent.  As soon as a person turns from their sin … turns from making their OWN rules up for how to run God’s world … and follows God’s rules … God pours out his grace upon them.  He forgives them their sin … through Jesus’ death … and grants them eternity in paradise.

Now … most Christians don’t want judgment for the people of Sydney.  Most Christians don’t want God to nuke non-Christians … right?  The problem is … our inbuilt desire for comfort STILL leaves us sitting next to Jonah … as we watch our city continue along the path TO destruction.  You see Jonah didn’t care about whether the plant lived or died.  He only cared about his comfort … about whether the plant was protecting his comfort.  Jonah is just like natural man.  Natural man says ‘I don’t deserve suffering; I deserve comfort’.  And many Christians today behave like natural man.  They choose NOT to warn people of God’s coming judgment … because it’s uncomfortable.  And it IS uncomfortable.  I’m not denying that.  People don’t like being told they’re wicked.  So they will likely push back on being told God is one day going to judge them for their wickedness.  So what do we do?

Well let me give us 2 things by way of application.  The first is to non-Christians … and the second is to Christians. So to those here today … or who might be listening on line … who HAVEN’T yet given your life to Jesus … let me say this; ALL we Christians want … is your wellbeing.  There’s a famous American magical duo named Penn & Teller.  And one of them … Penn Jillette is an outspoken atheist.  But Penn is quoted as saying he has ZERO respect for Christians who don’t proclaim Jesus.  He says ‘if I knew … without a doubt … that a truck was bearing down on you … yet you didn’t believe me, and you stayed where you were; there would be a point at which I would tackle you, to pull you from harm’s way.’  ‘But’ he says ‘there are Christians out there who know judgment is coming, yet fail to warn people about it.’

So to our non-Christian friends … please know we don’t tell you about Jesus for our own benefit.  We’re not looking for money.  We’re not looking for fame.  We’re not hoping you’ll be so thankful that you’ll become our servant for life.  We tell you about Jesus because we want you to avoid judgment.  And we step out of our comfort zone to do so.

To the Christians here today.  How CAN we step out of our comfort zone … to invite someone along to church … or talk to someone about Jesus?  I’ll TELL you how it WON’T happen.  It WON’T happen through guilt.  The early Christians didn’t put their lives on the line because they felt guilty.  They did it because they knew what it was like to have THEIR suffering alleviated.  Their sin had been forgiven.  And they wanted to pass that same gift onto others.  They wanted to alleviate the suffering of others.  Or in other words … they showed compassion.

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Conclusion

 

So the way we become the kind of compassionate people to change the world is to keep looking to Jesus.  Where the prophet Jonah went outside the city … that could have killed him, but didn’t … to pray for its destruction … Jesus went outside ANOTHER city … that WANTED to kill him … to pray for its deliverance.  May we continue to look to Jesus … who stepped out of his comfort zone to show US compassion … so that we will emulate God’s compassion … who says:

Jonah 4:10 (NIV) … and should I not have compassion for [that] great city?